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building manager, the superintendent, and a few maintenance men. If anyone asked, Julia did the badge flash and said we were police. No one recognized Mr. Defonte. The maintenance men showed us the side entrance, which had been visible from the roof. Besides the front door, that was the only way out; there was nothing that went through the back.
    “Not unless you’re Spider-Man,” one of the men said, moving a mop across the floor.
    In our time with Mr. Defonte, he had never seemed wily or agile, like some kind of escape artist. To me he had always looked weak, with his sluggish gait and doughy face and ridiculous hat. Outside I sat on the sidewalk and slumped against the building. The heat was as strong as ever. I felt like my skin was melting.
    “What the fucking fuck?” Julia paced in front of me.
    I pressed my face against my knees and groaned.
    Later we had to call Mrs. Defonte and tell her we’d lost her husband. She’d phoned his office in Boca Raton and the firm he was supposed to be meeting in Memphis; no one had seen or heard from him. He had simply vanished. Since it had been forty-eight hours, Mrs. Defonte called 911 and then the real police got involved.
    *   *   *
    We had seen him go into that building. We had seen him open the door and walk inside. Our stakeout had just started; we were sharp and rested and hydrated. We had taken photos. Could he have slipped out when we were on the seventh floor, even though no one saw anything? Can buildings eat people? At a certain point that seemed as likely as anything.
    We were required to turn our camera and film over to the police. They had examined every inch of the building, impounded his car and searched it for clues, and were as flummoxed as we were. Me and Julia and Mrs. Defonte met with an officer at the Boca Raton police station, a Detective Gregerson. He was an older man dressed in black slacks, sweat-stained shirtsleeves, and orthopedic shoes. He didn’t look capable of much, but then neither had Mr. Defonte. He slid the photos we had taken across the metal table and asked Mrs. Defonte if she could identify her husband. She gazed at the photos of him standing on the sidewalk, staring at his feet; reaching for the door; pulling it open and stepping inside. She wore a quarter-sleeve dress patterned with red and pink flowers and leather sandals. Her black hair was pulled into a tight bun. She looked tired and confused, as though she’d just woken up in a place she didn’t recognize.
    “It’s him,” she said.
    “Are you certain?” Detective Gregerson said.
    She nodded and pushed the pictures away.
    “What about the blond woman?” I asked.
    “Belinda Singer.” Julia cracked her knuckles, her go-to move when she was nervous.
    “We questioned her,” Detective Gregerson said. “She doesn’t know anything.”
    “What about all those pictures of her and Mr. Defonte?”
    “Did you ever see them talk to each other? Hold hands?”
    “No,” Julia and I said.
    “Did you ever see them interact in any way? Any contact at all?”
    We glanced at each other.
    “No,” Julia answered for us.
    “There you go.” He swept his hand to the side, like he’d solved something.
    “There you go what ?” I said. “It’s an excessive amount of coincidences.”
    He sighed. “Fucking PIs.”
    “What did we do?” Julia slapped her hand against the table.
    Detective Gregerson said that, in his experience, if you wanted to go looking for trouble, all you had to do was spend ten minutes with a few PIs.
    “It’s your aura,” he said.
    “We never stopped watching that building,” I said. We hadn’t. Not for a minute, save for when we searched for him inside. That was the one thing I was sure of.
    Mrs. Defonte looked at us and then at Detective Gregerson. “I never should have hired them,” she said. “I just wanted some answers.”
    “Don’t we all,” said the detective.
    I didn’t think it was fair for Mrs. Defonte to blame us, but at the same